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The last temptation of Chris

Chris Evans has emerged from his midlife crisis  minus his wife and many of his millions. So what really happened? Tim Rayment spent three days with the media tornado and found him surprisingly frank about the demons that drove him to the brink

So he's back. Celebrities purred up to Chris Evans as he hosted the Brit Awards last month, and all used the same form of words. "It's so good to see you back" (Jodie Kidd). "It's great to have you back" (Brian May). "Isn't it great to see Chris back on the television?" (Robbie Williams, to the audience.)

Well, they were half right: he's sort of back, in a midlife kind of way. The middle years are a strange time for a man, and the conflicts were always going to show in this one. Never inhibited by what anyone else thought, Evans has spent most of his adult life in an extended, if brilliant, childhood. He has done more or less what he wanted, and until recently it worked.

No longer. He has lost his young wife, and much of his fortune, and even his certainty as to what people want